the body present dialogues with what exists only as image
En La Habana, la Compañía Rosario Cárdenas se prepara para estrenar Ojalá, una obra de danza contemporánea que interroga lo que significa habitar un cuerpo humano en la era de la hiperconexión digital. Creada por el coreógrafo franco-cubano Nelson Reguera bajo la dirección artística de Rosario Cárdenas —Premio Nacional de Danza—, la pieza propone un diálogo sensorial entre la presencia física y el lenguaje virtual. Con más de tres décadas de investigación somática y exploración poética del movimiento, la compañía vuelve a situar el cuerpo como territorio de preguntas esenciales sobre la identidad y la transformación humana.
- En un momento en que la vida cotidiana se fragmenta entre lo presencial y lo digital, Ojalá llega como una respuesta artística urgente a la desorientación que genera la hiperconexión.
- El reto coreográfico es considerable: hacer que el cuerpo danzante dialogue con lo virtual sin reducirse a ilustración tecnológica, sino convirtiéndose en experiencia inmersiva y sensorial.
- Nelson Reguera afronta su cuarta obra en este formato, acumulando un lenguaje propio que fusiona fisicalidad y virtualidad en un espacio escénico que desafía los límites del espectador.
- La Compañía Rosario Cárdenas sostiene este estreno desde una trayectoria de más de 35 años, con una identidad artística construida sobre la investigación somática y el diálogo entre tradición y contemporaneidad.
- Las seis funciones programadas en el Centro Cultural Bertolt Brecht —del 29 al 31 de mayo y del 5 al 7 de junio— marcan un nuevo punto de inflexión en la danza contemporánea cubana.
La Compañía Rosario Cárdenas abrirá el próximo 29 de mayo el estreno de Ojalá en la Sala Tito Junco del Centro Cultural Bertolt Brecht de La Habana, con funciones programadas hasta el 7 de junio. La obra es el cuarto trabajo en formato contemporáneo del coreógrafo franco-cubano Nelson Reguera, y propone una meditación inmersiva sobre la transformación humana en tiempos de conexión digital permanente.
Lejos de cualquier discurso didáctico sobre la tecnología, Ojalá construye un espacio donde el cuerpo físico del bailarín entra en conversación con lo virtual —con aquello que existe únicamente como imagen o dato—. Es un territorio conceptual que Reguera explora bajo la dirección artística de Rosario Cárdenas, Premio Nacional de Danza, cuya compañía lleva desde 1989 desarrollando un lenguaje coreográfico singular, arraigado en la investigación somática y en la exploración poética del movimiento.
Lo que distingue a esta compañía en el panorama de la danza cubana es su insistencia en pensar a través del cuerpo: reflexionar sobre la identidad, sobre lo que significa existir en un momento histórico concreto, manteniendo siempre abierto el diálogo entre la herencia de la danza cubana y las posibilidades que ofrece lo contemporáneo. A esto se suma una labor pedagógica sostenida —talleres, residencias, programas de formación— que la compañía considera tan central como su propia producción escénica.
Ojalá es, en ese sentido, continuación y profundización: una nueva oportunidad para que una de las compañías más influyentes del país pregunte qué puede hacer la danza, qué puede decir el cuerpo, y cómo el espacio entre lo físico y lo virtual define cada vez más nuestra experiencia de estar en el mundo.
In Havana this week, the Rosario Cárdenas Company is preparing to open a new work called Ojalá, a dance piece that will occupy the Tito Junco Hall at the Bertolt Brecht Cultural Center for six performances across two weeks—May 29 through 31, and again June 5 through 7. The work comes from Nelson Reguera, a Franco-Cuban choreographer mounting his fourth piece in this particular format, and it arrives as the latest statement from one of Cuba's most consequential contemporary dance ensembles.
The piece itself proposes something immersive: a meditation on how human beings transform in an age of constant digital connection. Rather than lecturing about hyperconnection, Ojalá invites the audience into a sensory experience where the physical body—the dancer moving through space—enters into dialogue with the virtual, with what exists only as image or data. This is the conceptual territory Reguera has chosen to explore, and he is doing so under the artistic direction of Rosario Cárdenas, who holds Cuba's National Dance Prize.
The Rosario Cárdenas Company has been working in this register since 1989, when it was founded. Over more than three decades, the ensemble has developed a distinctive choreographic language, one that draws from somatic research—the careful study of how bodies actually move and feel from the inside—while also embracing theatrical gesture and what the company describes as poetic exploration of movement itself. This is not dance that simply displays technique. It is dance that asks questions.
What has made the company influential in Cuban dance circles is precisely this commitment to thinking through the body. The work reflects on identity, on what it means to inhabit a physical form in a particular moment in history. And it maintains a constant conversation between tradition—the inheritance of Cuban dance, the weight of what came before—and the possibilities of the contemporary, the new forms that become available when you refuse to be bound by what has already been done.
Beyond the stage work itself, the company sustains an equally serious pedagogical program. Workshops, residencies, training programs for dancers and choreographers—these are not afterthoughts or secondary activities. They are central to how the company understands its role. The ensemble is not simply making dances for audiences to watch. It is also cultivating the next generation of artists, creating spaces where dancers and makers can research, experiment, and develop their own voices.
Ojalá, then, represents both a continuation and a deepening of this work. It is another opportunity to witness one of the country's most influential contemporary dance companies in the act of asking what dance can do, what the body can express, and how we might understand ourselves differently by paying close attention to movement, to presence, to the space between the physical and the virtual that increasingly defines contemporary life. The performances begin at the end of May.
Citações Notáveis
The piece provokes the spectator through sensory experience, immersing them in a contemporary language where the physical body dialogues with the virtual.— Havana Dance Center announcement
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does a dance company in Havana in 2026 need to make a piece about hyperconnection? Isn't that a very global, very digital-world concern?
It is global, yes, but it's also deeply local. Cubans live with particular constraints on connectivity, particular histories with technology and isolation. When Reguera talks about the dialogue between the body and the virtual, he's not speaking abstractly. He's speaking to how people actually navigate their lives right now.
And the company itself—founded in 1989, so it was born right at the moment when Cuba's economy collapsed after the Soviet Union fell. Does that history shape what they do?
Absolutely. That was a moment of radical scarcity, of having to reinvent everything with almost nothing. The company emerged into that context and learned to build something durable by thinking deeply rather than spending lavishly. That discipline, that commitment to research and rigor, it's still there.
The piece merges the physical body with virtual language. How do you actually stage that? What does the audience see?
That's the question Reguera is answering with this work. It's immersive, so the audience isn't sitting in the dark watching a stage. They're inside the space. The body is present, moving, real. And then—through projection, through sound, through the architecture of the space itself—the virtual enters. The two exist together.
And Rosario Cárdenas herself—she won the National Dance Prize. What does that mean for how she leads the company?
It means she has earned the authority to ask hard questions and expect rigorous answers. She's not a figurehead. She's a maker who has spent decades thinking about what dance can be. That shapes everything the company touches.